Fourteen years ago, when I was a midshipman at Marine Corps Officer Candidates School, our female sergeant instructor lined us up at attention. “If you’re a woman in the Marine Corps,” she said, “you’re either a bitch, a dyke, or a ho.” Shocking? Perhaps. But with a purpose: she was trying to prepare us to interact with men who wouldn’t always be supportive of our presence. So this fall, before Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter announced that women would be allowed into all military occupations, I looked to the Marine Corps’ yearlong experiment to integrate women into ground combat jobs to see if attitudes had changed.

The early indications were not good. A four-page, unsigned summary of the experiment made public last summer bluntly concluded that all-male units outperformed integrated units in combat tasks, particularly hiking while carrying heavy loads and manning certain heavier weapons. But those four pages did not mention statistics about unit cohesion. When I interviewed several female Marines who participated in the experiment, I found an interesting pattern. The quality of leadership at the squad, platoon and company level was a key factor that directly affected the successful integration of women into a cohesive unit.

Sgt. Danielle Beck paused her career as a comptroller to join the experiment’s Weapons Company. She trained in anti-armor missiles, the heaviest of which weighed about sixty pounds. Of the six women that started in her platoon, she and two others finished; the other three were injured. “We had great leadership at Weapons Company,” Sergeant Beck said. The attitude was, ‘we’re here for a mission, we’re here for a task, and we’re gonna get this done.’ ”

Crucial to maintaining this attitude, she said, was the company leadership, headed by Capt. Mark Lenzi. “We interacted on a daily basis. We hiked, trained, P.T.’d — they were with us,” Sergeant Beck said. Leadership by example ingrained expectations of high performance into the troops.
Another advantage was that Weapons Company comprised mostly corporals and sergeants — NCOs in their early-to-mid-twenties, who were more mature than typical junior enlisted just out of high school. The men had been doing their jobs for years — tasks the women in the company had been trained for just months prior.

The Weapons Company Marines still debated whether women should be in combat arms units, but they did so calmly, she said. “We got to a point where we all talked about it openly, and no one was mad about it,” Sergeant Beck said. “We just talked professionally.”

Good leadership also made a strong impression on Lance Cpl. Jordyn Ridgeway when she joined the experiment and learned to drive amphibious assault vehicles, known as tracks, at Camp Pendleton in California. During the months of initial training, she said, the instructors “welcomed us with open arms. They said, ‘you might be a female, but you’re gonna be the best tracker out there, and I want them to know that I was the one who trained you.’ ” She stayed in touch with her former crew chief, who became a mentor.

But when the female trackers traveled to Twentynine Palms, Calif., to meet their male counterparts, the respectful environment disappeared. Sgt. Kathryn Bynum, who was part of the same platoon, said some of the women would flirt “and make us look stupid.” A lot of the men “thought we were a joke,” she said. “Even the staff NCOs would sit around and find ways to make fun of us.”

Her crew chief, a six-foot-plus, 200-pound male sergeant who towered over her 5-foot-4, 105-pound frame, addressed her with a variety of slurs. He left a dead mouse on her cot in an effort to get her to react. She laughed off the mouse, saying, “Is that all you got?” Her crew chief persisted, flinging water in her face. “He didn’t stop until I hit him,” said Sergeant Bynum, the eldest of nine children.

“The person that won was the person that was most aggressive,” she said. “It wasn’t the one that knew the most.” Not even this closely supervised unit was impervious to the kind of hazing and harassment the corps has tried to reduce. All of the women I interviewed said that a willingness to fight and prove themselves were the only things that earned them the men’s respect.

With a strong sense of duty as an NCO, Sergeant Bynum kept going. “I have to take care of those girls coming in,” she said. “There have to be NCOs.” In a previous unit, she had blazed a similar trail after coming out as a lesbian. Other Marines gave her a hard time. “Someone has to be the first one,” she said. “Think about the next kid after you.”

Sergeant Bynum and Lance Corporal Ridgeway recalled just one male sergeant, a natural leader with combat experience, who won the respect of both the men and women. In contrast, Sergeant Beck said her integrated unit was “one of the best” she had ever worked in.

Toxic leaders — those who use hazing and shame as tools to keep their troops in line — kill morale for everyone, and only make the challenges of gender integration worse. Good leaders guide their Marines to grow into good leaders themselves.

In the last month of testing, Lance Corporal Ridgeway described what she called the “come to Jesus” moment among the females in the amphibious assault vehicle platoon. Sequestered in a Quonset hut one night, they realized they had to be there for each other, and created the support structure lacking in their unit. This helped buoy them to the finish. “We just wouldn’t stop fighting because we believed in what we were doing,” Sergeant Bynum said.

Good small-unit leadership will never be more crucial than on January 1st, when the integration mandate goes into effect. “At the end of the day, we’re family,” Sergeant Bynum said. “And the family dynamic is going to change. Maybe it’ll be a little more dysfunctional, but we’re still going to take care of each other… we’re still going to be the best no matter what.”

Teresa Fazio served as a Marine Corps officer from 2002-2006, deploying once to Iraq. Her writing has been published in The New York Times and Task and Purpose, and is forthcoming in Vassar Quarterly and Consequence Magazine. Her manuscript, Unbecoming, was a finalist in the 2015 Autumn House Press Nonfiction Contest. You can follow her on Twitter @DoctorFaz.

This month, the Marine Corps began a historic experiment at its base in Twentynine Palms, Calif., to test women’s performance in combat arms. This Ground Combat Element Integrated Task Force uses high-tech tools to measure the physical performance of both men and women after a federal mandate to integrate women into all military occupational specialties — or request an exception — by January 2016. This differs from the past two decades, in which combat performance has only been measured in large-scale desert exercises. As a former Marine who was encouraged by the camaraderie of gender-integrated training, I look forward to this study’s promise to increase force readiness in a corps that is not quite 7 percent female.

As a 19-year-old R.O.T.C. midshipman in the summer of 2000, I went to Twentynine Palms for a distant granddaddy of the current experiment: a Combined Arms Exercise, which measured an infantry battalion’s combat readiness. A white government school bus delivered two dozen of us midshipmen to the base: eight women and the rest men.

In those weeks, we observed a company closing with its target and calling in mortars on old, bombed-out vehicles. Specially trained senior enlisted personnel and officers — called “coyotes” — monitored fires and kept notes on accuracy and timing. With instincts honed over hundreds of exercises, they evaluated unit performance on tasks such as conducting a raid and conducting a ground attack, standards the corps carefully maintains. Individual performance, however, wasn’t measured; platoons were expected to show up already trained. And all the combat arms specialties we encountered — such as firing rockets and roaring through the desert in armored vehicles — were open only to men.

But our instructor, a former Force Reconnaissance captain, made no mention of gender when assigning tasks; we all hiked the same terrain and carried the same supplies in our packs. I tried hard to keep up with one strong midshipman as her calves churned soft sand, knowing I’d see her again the following summer at Officer Candidates School. When we split into four-person fire teams to observe a reserve unit’s live-fire exercises, I was the only woman in mine, but we all looked identical in helmets and load-bearing vests.

The differences between the sexes that I experienced were surmountable. One afternoon, while others napped under camouflage netting, heavy with the smell of gear and sweat, I finagled my first taste of “Vitamin M,” the 800 milligram Motrin pill the Marine Corps doles out for pain. I told the doctor I had a stomach ache.

“You’re dehydrated,” he said. “What you want to do is drink water, maybe have a little salt tab — –”

“No, Doc,” I said. “I mean a girl stomach ache. I have cramps.”

He raised his eyebrows but coughed up the Motrin. I downed it and continued training.

The most significant integration came when we bedded down in the field. We split up not by sex, but by fire team. Team by team, we rolled out our sleeping bags on gravel and took turns standing watch. My brothers in arms slept to my left and my right, several feet away.

In the 15 years since then, the Marine Corps’ desert combat exercises have evolved to replicate environments found in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for a time incorporated gear for the Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System, a military version of laser tag. The training focused on units ranging in size from 30 to 1,000 Marines. Only a few men-only roles now remain, in fields including infantry, artillery, tanks, light armored vehicles and amphibious assault vehicles, or A.A.V.s.

This spring, researchers in the Ground Combat Element Integrated Task Force are evaluating both men and women in tasks including “marching under loads, fire and movement, providing offensive fires, defensive operations, conducting crew/casualty evacuations … ammunition resupply and A.A.V. water recovery,” according to Katelyn Allison, a University of Pittsburgh faculty member who is a co-principal investigator for the project.

Squads consist of up to 25 percent women, which means they can range from three women and 10 men one day, to one woman and 12 men the next, to a men-only squad later. This changing composition aims to correct for individual personality differences that can affect the teamwork of any combat unit.

And while my medical care was just Motrin, these Marines are being monitored at a whole new level.

Before even starting, the participants underwent a two-day test battery to gauge their baseline body composition, musculoskeletal strength, aerobic and anaerobic power capacity, balance and flexibility, Dr. Allison explained. They will continue to undergo these tests at different times during and after training.

Over the next three months, trainers will be collecting more data as the Marines run through simulated combat scenarios, including live-fire movement to contact and pulling heavy crash test dummies from vehicles. GPS will track each Marine’s position, weapon-mounted sensors will count shots fired, and wired targets will record the timing of each bullet, so that researchers can triangulate who fired where and when. Heart rate monitors will measure individual Marines’ physical exertion in real time; subsequent after-action surveys and cortisol swabs will match the Marines’ reported efforts to their actual physiological states.

This avalanche of data offers individualized detail, complementary to the gestalt approach of eagle-eyed coyotes scribbling handwritten notes as I watched 15 summers ago. This specificity can help the researchers filter the effects of any one Marine.

The aim, Dr. Allison said, “is to establish gender-neutral characteristics that can predict safe and successful completion of ground combat tactical training and tasks.” If remediation is necessary for subsets of the population, she said, “targeted physical training may aim to increase overall force readiness and resiliency.” In other words, smaller female Marines might need additional physical training to prepare for inclusion into combat arms specialties. But so might short, slender men. Targeted training would increase the probability that more female Marines could fill combat arms roles, and could help the corps comply with federally mandated gender integration.

But Dr. Allison also warned that “the load is the same regardless of the size of the person carrying or moving the load,” and “Marines of smaller stature may find difficulty.”

This is consistent with my experience; I am 5-foot-1 and 118 pounds. Marching 20 miles in 80 pounds of gear was more difficult for me than for my bigger comrades, but not impossible. I gained confidence from my stay in Twentynine Palms that carried me through gender-integrated basic officer training. I was encouraged that although the percentage of women was small, we could integrate as much as possible if we performed to the same standards. After all, years later, no one cared that I was a woman when our battalion convoyed from Kuwait into Iraq.

So I’m rooting for the young women of the Ground Combat Element Integrated Task Force as the Marine Corps takes their measure in this challenge. If in the future, at the end of a day of hoisting ammunition or clambering out of assault vehicles, a young Marine shakes out her sleeping bag and rests her head on a rolled-up sweatshirt, and to her left and her right are brothers — and sisters — in arms, it will expand the historical definition of a combat warrior.

Teresa Fazio was a Marine Corps officer from 2002 to 2006, deploying once to Iraq. She lives and works in New York City, and is writing a memoir set during and after deployment. She is also a member of the Truman National Security Project Defense Council.You can follow her on Twitter.

No millennial worth his iPhone remembers life before social media. While previous generations’ warfighters wrote letters or phoned home over spotty connections, Marines today can post on Instagram photos of themselves sitting atop cans of ammunition. In 2010, the photojournalist Teru Kuwayama and his collaborators embedded in Afghanistan to start a Facebook page for the First Battalion, Eighth Marines to communicate with loved ones. Far from resulting in just another live-stream of minutiae, their Basetrack project became a way for deployed troops to maintain relationships with their families. The resulting trove of photos and videos provide ample fodder for “Basetrack Live” — the onstage story of one corporal’s deployment and homecoming, and the effects on his family.

For both the battalion and a nation’s artists, self-reflection occurred stunningly quickly through the use of social media. Anne Hamburger, executive producer of En Garde Arts, the company behind “Basetrack Live,” said she felt it was important to document the human side of going to war, without sensationalizing the experience.

“The issues are so complex” when an ordinary person deploys, Ms. Hamburger said. Her biggest challenge for the production, which is showing at the Harvey Theater, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and will be going on a national tour, was paring down the “incredible wealth of material,” she said.

Ms. Hamburger reached out through Facebook, gathering more than 100 respondents and conducting three dozen interviews to cull images and video for the project. Every word in “Basetrack Live” is taken from interviews with Marines or members of their families.

This citizen journalism captures the truth of troops’ feelings during deployment, including graffiti about pornography, and profane, funny rules for standing watch and cleaning toilets. The images chosen for the production reflect the Marines’ brotherhood, including an impressive assortment of tattoos. Because of the authentic, emotion-rich material, the Marines are painted neither as heroes nor victims.

The plot delves into the relationship between Cpl. A. J. Czubai and his wife, Melissa. Corporal Czubai is played by Tyler La Marr, a former Marine Corps sergeant and the founder of the Society of Artistic Veterans. Mr. La Marr is quick to point out that his experiences as a signals intelligence analyst in Iraq were distinctly different from Corporal Czubai’s infantry deployments to Afghanistan.

Initially, Mr. La Marr was worried that Corporal Czubai would be angry “because a pogue is telling his story!” he said in an interview, referring to military slang for “a person other than grunt,” or infantryman. But talking with Corporal Czubai helped, and the actor acknowledged that his boot camp training, with its ethos of “every Marine a rifleman,” gave him a head start on the role.

Melissa Czubai, played by Ashley Bloom, wrestles with a lack of control over situations engineered by the Marine Corps, including A. J.’s inability to be present for the birth of their daughter because of his predeployment training. “Basetrack Live” also includes the perspectives of other wives and girlfriends, and that of one Marine’s mother, to illustrate the war’s toll on families.

The web of relationships also highlights the desire of civilians to hear from Marines in close-to-real-time, bringing to light the space between deployed and home environments, and the nuanced human drama that it spans. Social media’s rapid communications can be a mixed blessing, as worries on the home front can be transmitted to deployed troops, and electrons can convey flaring tempers in both directions. Of greatest concern were erroneous reports of casualties on Facebook, which only served to accelerate the rumor mill among wives and girlfriends. In Corporal Czubai’s case, his wife learned of his best friend’s death before he did, even though he was in a neighboring company in Afghanistan.

The speed of modern life, reflected in social media, can also be jarring to nerves accustomed to a contained, mission-focused environment. After being wounded in a firefight, Corporal Czubai is sent back to the United States, while his comrades carry on in Afghanistan. This loss of his unit’s camaraderie disorients him. Overwhelmed by paranoia and guilt, he drinks, buys an array of weapons, threatens suicide and struggles with a strained marriage. He eventually accepts counseling from the Department of Veterans Affairs, but the play avoids a saccharine ending.

Now out of the Marine Corps and studying for a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington, Corporal Czubai has seen several performances of “BaseTrack Live” and found the adaptation of his story “captivating.”

Ms. Hamburger said that she intended for the show to walk a fine line: conveying emotion without being overly sentimental about the participants’ experiences. The music — original compositions by Edward Bilous, Michelle DiBucci and Greg Kalember — blends a variety of styles: the rush of initial deployment to Afghanistan mixes powerful hip-hop with tribal tunes, while the disorientation of combat is illustrated by crashing rock and bright lights.

Using authentic videos and images, “Basetrack Live” offers a realistic perspective on relationships when one partner has gone to war, and how, after the long road home, social media can be a useful tool to build a sense of community. The wives and girlfriends of those serving in the First Battalion, Eighth Marines, who found each other via the project’s Facebook page, offered one another support, including tactics for waking sleeping Marines with hair-trigger reactions. And many of the Marines, themselves, stayed in touch with one another long after returning home, and were trading bear hugs at Tuesday night’s performance.

In future wars, the speed of communication will only get faster. Short of hologramming into combat, service members’ loved ones cannot get much closer than connecting daily via social media. Emotionally, this can blur the lines between battlefield and home front. “Basetrack Live” ably captures this juxtaposition and its aftermath, affording viewers a fresh look at war’s realities and at the challenges of coming home.
“Basetrack Live” was adapted by Jason Grote in collaboration with Seth Bockley and Anne Hamburger. It is playing at the Harvey Theater, Brooklyn Academy of Music, (651 Fulton St, Brooklyn) through Saturday.

Teresa Fazio was a Marine Corps officer from 2002 to 2006 and deployed to Iraq. She lives and works in New York, and is writing a memoir about a relationship during deployment.

Just before Sept. 11, 2001, my teenage brother Mike, fresh from Air Force training, pressed something small into my palm: two pin-backings stubbed on a curled shape in dusky silver. Jump wings.

“If you keep them safe, I’ll always be safe,” he said.

My brothers and I had always tried to protect each other. Chris, the younger, was calm, but Mike was rambunctious. When I was 4 and they were toddlers, I would sneak into their room past midnight to ensure they still occupied their dual cribs. I would poke a finger through the crib slats, slide up their eyelids, and check their breathing as they slept. Safe in their company, I would curl up on the floor for a minute, then pad back to my pink-swathed bed. But by elementary school, our parents had divorced, and anger ran through our thin walls.

When I was 14, our stepfather and Mike, 12, got in a fight over pajamas. Too cowardly to burst in, I stayed in bed and turned up my Walkman. Mike sobbed himself to sleep with a nosebleed that soaked his mattress. He had misbehaved, but my crime felt worse — I had let him thrash alone. As the years passed, conflicts with our stepfather prompted police cruiser lights on our street. When I finished high school, Mike’s card to me read, “…Stay another year? Please?” I should have ensured my brothers grew up strong. Instead I fled.

At 18, I paid for college with a Marine Corps R.O.T.C. scholarship; the military’s rules seemed enlightened next to the ones back home. Mike later barreled into the same Boston unit as an Air Force cadet. He tagged along on field exercises with us upperclassmen, easily completing grueling hikes and rappelling down university buildings. My senior year, the Twin Towers fell, and I knew at some point I would deploy. The following June, Mike and Chris pinned gold lieutenant bars on my shoulders.

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Teresa Fazio receiving her Marine Corps commission in 2002, with her two brothers, Chris on the left and Mike on the right. Credit Courtesy of Teresa Fazio

Two years later, on an Iraqi base, I nervously strapped myself into an androgynous Kevlar jacket. Tromping around our gravel-strewn compound, I doled out candy and phone cards while waiting for mortars to fall. We plodded through our days, trusting in grace that wherever we stepped was safe. Late at night, when the desert heat lifted, I taught my Marines martial arts. As we punched foam mats and dragged each other through the sand, I wondered how my fist would feel against my stepfather’s face, how much pressure my forearm required to choke his carotid artery. But I could not predict the techniques my sparring partners threw; I could only try to counter them. And my rage did not help me lead.

One night, I ordered my troops to repair broken cables across an exposed airfield. Mortars exploded in front of them. Riddled with anxiety, I monitored the radio, counting heads. My dog tags said I was 23 years old. I felt 80.

Meanwhile, Mike graduated from R.O.T.C. He mailed me his uniform cap on which to fasten his lieutenant’s insignia, a shiny “butterbar,” the same way he had once pinned on mine. I sent it back from Iraq, properly pinned, with two more matte-bronze lieutenant bars thrown into the envelope for good luck.

In war, officers mark their rank subtly in order to hide from snipers. In childhood, I had learned to fly under the radar. From 8,000 miles away, I still tried to coach my firebrand brother on avoiding trouble. But soon he had become a combat controller, jumping from planes and calling in airstrikes for troops on the ground. His specialized training would supersede all of my advice. The Marine in me was impressed. The sister in me was terrified.

Still, I knew where his jump wings were. I had pinned them into a nylon wallet next to a note from our late Italian grandmother. On a hospital menu, she had written, “Non dare a calci ogni piccola pietra per strada — aspetta per una piri grande.” “Do not kick every small stone on the road — wait for a large rock.” That is, pick your battles.

I picked Iraq. As I waited for my Marines to call me from that mortar-scarred airfield, I knew we were also at risk from rockets in the shower or the radio tent. Ducking prematurely was no guard against hardship. My platoon proved lucky; despite my new-lieutenant stumbles, we all lived. And however much I cared for Mike, I couldn’t completely protect him, whether from family violence, incoming rounds, or planes in a blue autumn sky. Now it was his turn to jump.

He survived his first deployment, and the next, and four more after that. He is currently serving on his seventh tour overseas. So I trust in dark, brushed metal. And I keep his jump wings safe.

Teresa Fazio spent four years as a Marine Corps officer from 2002 to 2006, deploying once to Iraq. She lives and works in New York City and is writing a memoir about a deployment relationship.

I chucked them with the enthusiasm of an eager second lieutenant in the spring of 2004. Our Marines in Camp Taqaddum’s Communications Company, the smartest electron-slingers on a logistics and air base 10 miles west of Falluja, kept radios, switches and routers humming quietly. The cork dartboard was mounted on plywood, where we aimed at scrawled “troubleshooting procedures” like “blame the distant end,” “turn off switchboard” or, my favorite: “prank call Systems Control.”

Then four Blackwater contractors were murdered and hung from a bridge. Shortly after, a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device hit a truck full of Marines on a nearby supply route. Our company commander did a walk-through of the Mortuary Affairs bunker during processing: marking wounds and tattoos, shading missing body parts.

The major returned to our company with a creased brow. “Couple things,” he said, his usual prelude to our evening formation. Then he told us the dartboard had to go. He gathered us closer and quietly said we could expect a spike in network traffic in the coming week. For the next day, there would be a cease-fire so Iraqi women, children and the elderly could escape Falluja. Then the infantry attacked. No time for games now; instead, we needed the troubleshooting procedures we had trained with.

We spliced cables and monitored satellite signals and changed the cryptography keys religiously, knitting our company together with common purpose. We were proud and arrogant. We assumed the grunts would light up the city and charge right through. We had backup generators ready, five-gallon jerrycans filled to the screw-cap with fuel. I felt lucky that aside from mortar attacks, “increased network traffic” was our biggest worry.

On the rumored invasion day, we stood atop the Systems Control hut at dusk. As I squinted, my sergeants swore they could see splashes of fire on the horizon. Marines will never get off a roof when something is blowing up.

A few days later, it was announced that the grunts would not stay in Falluja after all. After about 50 American service members — most of them Marines — died in the battle, this pulling back disappointed and enraged me. I thought we had committed to fight for an immediate victory, but instead we went back to slinging electrons and waiting for our base to be mortared. Falluja and Ramadi remained hot spots through our entire deployment, yielding heavy casualties. Fallen Marines were transported through Camp Taqaddum on their final journey. I was grateful that our company did not take any casualties, even when insurgents blew up our ammunition supply point the night before we flew home: Sept. 11, 2004.

Through it all, the dartboard never went back up.

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The dartboard, which never went back up.Credit Teresa Fazio

On my last day before catching a flight back to the States, I met an old squadmate from the Basic School. We were so glad to see each other that his thumb left a bruise on my hand when we shook hello. It was his first day in Iraq. Three months later, in December 2004, he was wounded in Falluja in the second battle for the city. Another former classmate had led a platoon through intense fighting during the beginnings of that battle. They successfully took the government center, which insurgents had recently bombed. Americans won only by using overpowering force, cratering buildings and bulldozing debris to clear paths for infantry. Ninety-five Marines died. I did not learn of my friends’ roles until months afterward; our communication was sparse, and in those confusing days after I returned home, I could not even watch the news. But we finally controlled Falluja, and three years later, Americans scored enough points with tribal leaders to prompt the Sunni Awakening. The city calmed, and bulldozers were tools for construction, not invasion.

All of that progress seems to have been reversed in recent weeks, as Iraq’s affiliate of Al Qaeda grabbed control of much of Falluja. My old Marine colleagues have posted comments online about going back and blasting through again. I felt disappointment and disgust at the fall of the city, and the humbling feeling of being a very small cog in a very big war machine. Ten years ago, the first Marine invasion of Falluja was not forceful enough. But the second invasion, in which Marines overpowered the entire area, was apparently not a lasting solution, either. Was all of our “troubleshooting” for anything, other than keeping each other alive?

I am struck by the impermanence of victory, whether in parlor games or in war. Perhaps in Falluja, the Iraqi Army and tribal militias will eventually be able to repel Qaeda forces. If tribal leaders came together for the Sunni Awakening, they might yet form another solution, though it may take years.

And I have to believe in the value of service members’ buoying each other. Keeping a communications network steady through mortar attacks, sharing moments of recognition when crossing paths, feeling concern about colleagues dealing with gruesome deaths — these experiences bonded us. In a moving New Republic piece, my buddy whose platoon took the government center made the point that his preschool daughter and toddler son would not exist, were it not for the actions of his comrades during the second battle for Falluja. And through reunions, writing workshops and online communities, my fellow Marines and I remain dedicated to supporting each other, even as veterans. Our mission has changed: Thrive in the present, in civilian life, even if it includes news that is a slap in the face. For me, the community of veterans has been a blessing, despite my chagrin at Falluja’s recent fall.

In the end, I refuse to believe that my service in Iraq was for nothing. We were not only throwing darts at a dartboard — we also took our jobs seriously, and took care of each other. I choose to view the sheer fact of safe return as a victory in itself. From a distance of 10 years and 8,000 miles, the fate of Falluja is no longer up to us and our “troubleshooting procedures.” The only military lessons I can glean are ones of imperfection and impermanence. So I am shifting my aim to supporting fellow veterans, and to life after war, and not holding out hope for a bull’s-eye.

Teresa Fazio was a Marine Corps officer from 2002 to 2006, deploying once to Iraq. She has read her writing at the Kennedy Center and has been a panelist at the New York Public Library’s Veteran History Series: Women Warriors on C-SPAN. She lives and works in New York City, and is writing a memoir set during and after deployment.

I never meant to be a wartime hussy. Unlike Paula Broadwell, I was not buff and beautiful; I was a shy Catholic girl from White Plains, N.Y., with a calligraphed physics diploma. As a 23-year-old Marine lieutenant just a year and a half out of R.O.T.C., my plan for a seven-month Iraq deployment included laying fiber-optic cable underground, not taking up with a comrade 12 years my senior.

I befriended him in the cavernous chow hall as he forked limp cabbage onto a plastic plate. He worked in our battalion’s mortuary affairs unit, and scraping human remains from helicopters had killed his taste for meat. When I asked if he had a family, he said, “what’s left of it.” His estranged wife cared for their 7-year-old son, who was my youngest brother’s age. Soon we e-mailed bawdy jokes over the network my wire platoon helped set up on our base in Anbar Province.

Teresa Fazio was a Marine lieutenant on a seven-month deployment in Anbar Province in Iraq.Credit Teresa Fazio

Other female Marines were ogled and jockeyed over, but no brawny pilots glanced my way, except to ask for radio batteries. I felt homesick and craved male attention. But living up to my M.I.T. degree, I remained undateable, even surrounded by 5,000 guys in the desert. He promised he’d lay me out in a prom dress if I ever died in action. His invitation to a midnight movie surprised me, and I said yes.

After months of faking fearlessness while dodging weekly mortar attacks, and pretending my lack of sex appeal didn’t bother me, I dropped my guard upon stepping into his quiet bunker. As we picked from a binder of scratched DVDs, my desperation, terror, and loneliness ebbed. When the bootleg Jack Black comedy ended, he lifted a finger, caressed my cheek, said he found me attractive. I reminded him he was still married. But his attention intoxicated me. Especially after I watched him work.

One night I fidgeted against a wall as two Marines lugged a body-bag-laden stretcher to a workstation flanked by shelves of nitrile gloves. Blood puddled as they unzipped the bag, lifting the body of a Navy Seabee whose crewcut spiked fresh over ashen skin. He scissored open filthy cargo pockets, fishing out a startlingly clean pack of Camels. I remained grim-faced, faking dispassion in hopes of seeming strong. I thought this forged our bond into something pure.

We never had sex. But if caught, we could have been court-martialed for conduct that was “prejudicial to good order and discipline.” I feared the base rumor mill turning on us, but no one suspected a popular married officer to want a nerdy lieutenant viewed as everyone’s kid sister. So our “movie night” expanded to every night no one had died. What were a few hours of pawing, I rationalized, when you could be killed in the morning? When he returned from daylong convoys, I ignored my guilt and sneaked across our rock-strewn compound to be with him. We kissed, held each other, napped under his poncho liner. Neither of us knew when a shrill phone or hauled stretcher would wrest us from our clinch.

Weekly, I pressed him for a guarantee – that we would wind up together, that his divorce was inevitable, that he’d always love me. His reply never wavered: “I’m just trying to get through today.” Beneath the adrenaline, I convinced myself that what we shared would still hold up back home.

We feared dying daily, but staunchly ignored our morals’ death throes. My callousness shocked me; my own mother had left my dad for another man, dragging us through child-support battles in a tense, chaotic divorce. My conscience whispered I could cause his son the same pain. I kept a snapshot of my dad, grandfather and brothers as my laptop screensaver, a reminder to not shame my family. My best friend, to whom I’d confessed in scrawled letters, wrote, “I love you. Don’t screw up.”

But I screwed up. I fell for him, hard. The closer we clung to each other, the farther the war receded, until our longed-for homecoming loomed. When my platoon formed up on my last morning in Iraq, he stood, steeling himself, at a respectful distance. He didn’t want to come closer; he’d said, “I just want to be home with my kid.” I silently slung my pack into an airfield-bound truck. Death and destruction had become routine, but I’d ignored the risk of emotional massacre. I’d sacrificed my officer’s integrity, and it had not won him over.

Back on our California base, I realized I was just a tawdry cliché: the younger woman pining for a married man who will never leave his wife. Tormented, I confessed to another female officer, who revealed he had hit on her, too. I wasn’t special. I drove six hours to confront him and punched him in the face.

I beat myself up, convinced I was a terrible person. Though I never had to publicly apologize, as General Petraeus did, I was terrified of losing my reputation. Keeping the secret upped my despair. Issued M9 Berretta in hand, I contemplated suicide in the hills behind our battalion headquarters. Only the thought of my yellow Labrador snapped me out of it. When my Marine Corps contract ended, I started graduate school in New York. He and I stayed in sporadic contact for several years, until his wife found a text I’d sent. I finally revealed the affair to my mother, whose unconditional love helped me let go of shame. The empathy of friends and family, along with counseling, helped me give him up for good. I grew confident and felt loved.

No one goes to war intending to commit these personal crimes. But mired in complex stresses and heightened emotions in a spare and dangerous place, he and I sought solace from each other. The battle I fought after deployment was one for self-forgiveness. To truly come home from Iraq, I had to slash that bond, casualty of a mortuary affair.

Teresa Fazio spent four years as a Marine Corps officer from 2002 to 2006, deploying once to Iraq. She lives and works in New York City and is writing a memoir.

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At War is a reported blog from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and other conflicts in the post-9/11 era. The New York Times's award-winning team provides insight — and answers questions — about combatants on the faultlines, and civilians caught in the middle.

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